Many medical procedures such as, for example, angioplasty procedures can pose challenges even to the most experienced physicians. When performing angioplasty procedures such as angioplasty balloon procedure to eliminate blockages in a blood vessel, a physician may insert and manipulate several operational tools, for example, guidewires, catheters and sheaths into a patient's arterial network, until reaching the blockage point. During the navigation in the patient's arterial network, the physician may inject a contrasting fluid into the arterial network to allow a visual inspection of the location of the tools in the arterial network on a display (e.g., a fluoroscope display under continuous X-ray radiation). The operational tool(s) include a guidewire coaxially located inside the catheter, which in turn is coaxially located inside the sheath. Upon reaching the blockage point the catheter is replaced with an angioplasty catheter that comprises a balloon, to be inflated and open the blockage. A stent is then placed in the blockage area and the balloon is removed.
Medical procedures, such as an angioplasty balloon procedure, that involve delicate and coordinated hand movements, spatially unrelated to the view on a video monitor of the remotely controlled operational tools may pose a number of challenges. Depth perception is lacking on a flat video display and therefore it is not an easy task to learn to control the tools through the spatially arbitrary linkage. A mistake in this difficult environment can be dangerous. Therefore, a high level of skill is required, and a realistic training of these specialists is a complex task. For example, a trainer or instructor may guide a trainee to manipulate the operational tools inside the arterial network of a patient possibly suffering from a heart disease or a patient that undergoes a heart attack.
Image-guided procedures, such as vascular catheterization, angioplasty, and stent placement, are specially suited for simulation because they typically place the physician at-a-distance from the operative site manipulating operational tools and viewing the procedures on video monitors. Several systems have been developed to train physicians in angioplasty procedures. The systems simulate the actual tactile sensation that the user feels when the arterial network applies force on each tool and display to the user a simulated image (e.g., a fluoroscopic image) of the operational tool inside the arterial network.
The length of the operational tools used in endovascular procedures requires that the simulator shall be long, making the current simulation systems long, heavy and less portable, for example, for presentations or training sessions at different medical institutions or even at different department within the same medical institution. Additionally, the maintenance of such systems is complicated. For example, each time a failure is detected in one of the systems components (e.g., in a sensor) the entire system must be shipped back to the manufacturer. Since different components are used to sense and control the different operational tools, (e.g., each system has three different sensors) those sensors must be replaced and calibrated by the manufacturer.
Complicated simulations systems that comprise one or more sensors may lose calibration due to moving the system or through constant interaction with tools and may require re-calibration by an expert technician in order to render the simulator operational. The need to simulate various advancement channels of the tools to match the manner endovascular procedures are performed, with multiple entry points of tools into the body, further requires that simulators will have multiple channels that may also be joined at their distal end.
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